When a breast pump malfunctions the night before a major talk, mathematician Krystal Taylor confronts anxiety and perfectionism.
Krystal Taylor is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the Ohio State University. Her research lies at the interface of harmonic analysis, fractal geometry, and geometric measure theory. She studies distance and projection problems, with particular interest in how geometric structure emerges from sparse or fractal sets. As well as being an active researcher, Krystal has a passion for helping graduate students and early career mathematicians find meaningful careers. She serves as Associate Editor for the Notices of the AMS and organizer of the Math to Industry seminar.
Story Transcript
It's April of 2023 and I'm in a hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio. It's my first time away from my new baby. While this is my second child, it's still just as hard to be away from him.
It's the night before I'm going to give this big talk in front of an audience of maybe 200 people. They've given me this fancy suite with a separate living room and bedroom. There's this plaid collegiate wallpaper, and I've already gone through the buffet of pillows on the oversized bed to try to find the best one. Now, I'm sitting propped up on the bed, attached to a breast pump, looking at my slides. My room is dimly lit and the only sound is the hum of the pump.
Despite the calm around me, I'm feeling anything but calm inside. I have high expectations, possibly impossible expectations, for how this talk should go. On a very basic level, I want the audience to leave with a few solid takeaways and maybe some lingering questions. But somehow this simple goal has become shrouded in anxiety and perfectionism, transforming into something unobtainable. I want the audience to hang on my every word and leave transformed with a deeper understanding of my area of research. I'm excited to tell them everything I know and offer elegant, compelling, real‑world applications along the way.
This is worth saying, the mathematics I do is purely abstract, and real‑world applications are, in fact, not my motivating factor. I have learned, however, that people like real‑world applications. Real‑world applications are interesting.
One of the ways I deal with my anxiety is by generating lots of slides. At this point, I have about 35 slides. I'd really like to get it down to maybe 10, 10 solid slides to give this presentation. They should be relatable and grab the audience's attention. But on the other hand, I want to convey the message that this is serious mathematics, and I know what I'm doing.
I'm a math professor at Ohio State. Usually, when people ask me what I do for a living, I occasionally try to avoid the topic. Because as soon as you say “math professor,” you've kind of put yourself in this weird, sometimes unrelatable category where the person is potentially going to relive their worst possible memories of junior high school mathematics. Or start telling you about how they're not very good at arithmetic. I just don't want to go there.
But tomorrow, I want to step into this role and show that, yes, women, even with children, can do hard mathematics and be the most interesting person in the room.
I'm looking through my slides, and I have one on how the Greeks computed the circumference of the earth using shadows. It introduces a key tool in my research in a direct way, the use of projections or mathematical shadows to understand the geometry of an object. I am excited about this one and decide to keep it.
There's another slide about how the Fourier transform works similarly to the human ear by decomposing signals, like sound waves, into frequencies.
But then there's an overwhelming collection of technical slides that need to be summed up and somehow translated into relatable form.
All the while, this breast pump is starting to get really uncomfortable. I reach for a pillow to put behind my back. It's just slightly out of reach. And as I bend over, one of the flanges of this pump pops loose and milk spills all over my laptop. It's late at night. I possibly just destroyed my talk files, and I'm feeling completely overwhelmed.
I look up and see the beautiful Brooks Brothers dress that I picked out for tomorrow hanging neatly in the closet. Then I see the awful shoes that I picked out to go with it. I am beating myself up for not being further along and figuring all this out. Why didn't I just get this done earlier? Why don't I own a good pair of black pumps? And why can't I just be at home right now holding my baby? I feel like giving up.
But that isn't an option at this point. So I clean up the mess and collect the milk from the pump. and put it in a little bag that I will later bring to the front desk and ask them to put into the freezer. And I make a deal with myself that I will stay up for another two hours to pull this talk together and, at the end of that time, whatever I have is going to have to be enough. Then I will go to sleep.
I don't remember much about the next morning. I assume my skin was dry from caffeine consumption and using a machine that literally sucks the moisture out of my body. But I'm fairly confident that I at least brought a good moisturizer with me.
I do, however, vividly remember the moments immediately before my talk. I'm standing at the base of the stage, off to the side, in a dark auditorium filled with people. My former PhD advisor comes over and tells me he's been asked to introduce me. My heart is pounding, and it's a relief to see a familiar face. He's wearing his customary round glasses, black t‑shirt, and khaki pants. And for the occasion, he's added a blazer. He wants to run by me what he plans to say. It's a great honor and it means so much that he's here doing this.
And then he tells me what he plans to say. It certainly doesn't support the professional rock star image I'm going for. He says, “When Krystal came into my office over 10 years ago and told me she had a weak background in math, but that more than anything, since she was 18, she wanted to be a mathematician, I knew she had what it takes. Since that time, Krystal has gone on to achieve great things.” And he goes on to talk about my path.
But I get hung up on that phrase, “a weak background.” In retrospect, I can see how this would be an inspiring story. But at the moment, it felt like he was about to walk up in front of all these people and tell them a secret that I didn't have a strong background when I started graduate school.
Yes, I knew I liked math since I was a child. It just took me a long time to find someone that would take me seriously and offer mentorship. I remember telling one of my college professors that I wanted to do math at the university someday. And he told me, “Well, you know it's hard to go into academia and raise children.” This was a different professor, of course. Raising children was the farthest thing from my mind at that time.
So we're at the base of the stage and I say, “No, please don't say that.”
He looks confused but says okay. “Okay, that's why I wanted to ask you.” And there's no time to deliberate because it's time to go on. It's time to start.
He walks on the stage and greets the audience. The light is blaring down. And now, with his plan out the window, instead he says, “Krystal walked into my office 10 years ago and said, ‘I'll do whatever it takes to make it in math.’”
And I feel this weight in the pit of my stomach. Why did I have to control his story? I look out into the audience and see this group of women, women that I used to spend more time with before I had babies. They're laughing at this comment and the obvious connotations of it. Well, I can't do anything about it now.
So I muster up my best posture in preparation to walk onto the stage. I walk up the stairs and towards the front of the stage to face the audience and start to deliver my talk. The bright lights are shining in my eyes, but I've been in this position so many times now. I know to speak slowly and put emphasis at the right moments.
I pause between slides to give the audience a moment to stay with me and also to give myself the opportunity to remember all that I wanted to say, or at least all that I need to say. I look out into the sea of faces and see the chair of my department, and I feel a tinge of anxiety hoping this all goes well.
And then I spot some of my math brothers. These are people who graduated under the same PhD advisor, the same supportive person, and one of them has a camera. He's waving and pointing to it the way a father might at graduation, as if to say, “Hey, this is important, and I'm here to take a video for you.”
I take a deep breath. I get to the end of the talk and I have a picture of my babies, my little boys stacked on top of each other in a sled with the caption, “Pigeonhole principle in action.” A math joke.
And Betsy Stovall, who is this amazing, definitely rock star mathematician, is in the front row and lets out this big, joyful laugh. I feel a huge sense of relief. Certainly it wasn't perfect, but I felt a connection to the audience. And, again, my slides were not perfect, and my preparation methods have major room to improve. But I gave it what I had, and it was enough.
I still get anxious before talks and let what others think get the best of me. But what is different now is that I know the years that I have put into this. I know that my message is worthwhile. And, yes, even women with children can do hard mathematics.